Acer cites Vista as reason for lowered sales forecast

Acer has revised down its projected revenue for 2007, claiming that Windows …

The world's third-largest PC maker, Acer Inc., announced yesterday that it was scaling back its projected growth to between 30 and 40 percent for this year. Acer chairman J.T. Wang made the announcement to the company's shareholders yesterday, placing most of the blame on Windows Vista. According to Wang, Vista has failed to spur PC sales, and potential buyers are staying away from the operating system until "software compatibility issues" are repaired.

Even with the disappointing announcement (especially for shareholders), Wang told his audience that Acer still expects to have a successful second half of 2007, although revenues would not grow by over 40 percent as he initially predicted. "I am still optimistic about our shipment growth, but I was even more so before," he said.

Last year, Acer shipped roughly 14 million PCs, which amounted to a 39 percent growth over 2005.